"It has come, the Spring!"

"...Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't see it in rooms if you are ill."
"It is the sun shining on the rain, and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary...

...She unchained and unbolted and unlocked, and when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm, sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky, and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself, and knew that thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it...

...The afternoon was even lovelier and busier than the morning had been. Already nearly all the weeds were cleared out of the garden and most of the roses and trees had been pruned or dug about. Dickon had brought a spade of his own, and he had taught Mary to use all her tools, so that by this time it was plain that though the lovely wild place was not likely to become a 'gardener's garden,' it would be a wilderness of growing things before the springtime was over.

 --Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The Secret Garden"

Mary and Dickon and Colin have been our literary inspiration lately.

On cool, grey or rainy mornings, we've been reading "The Secret Garden," studying botany, playing The Ladybug Game, continuing our Roman history, and trying to get started on a little spring cleaning.



Outside, we've pulled weeds, planted two avocado trees, three blueberry bushes, six rose bushes, a few lavender plants and lots of pansies, and watched our happy chickens scratch for bugs.

We've finished the first two chapters of "Exploring Creation with Botany," learned about angiosperms (flowering plants) and gymnosperms (conifers), studied the parts of a seed and their role in germination, identified the difference between monocotyledons (petals in multiples of 3, non-branching veins) and dicotyledons (petals in multiples of 4 or 5, branching veins), and collected samples for their notebook pages.

Tulip: angiosperm, monocotyledon

Western redbud: angiosperm, dicotyledon

Today I've been laid up in bed ala Colin (with a bit of food poisoning), but tomorrow we're hoping to get some summer veggies in the ground. It should be another lovely, sunny, warm spring day.

How are you enjoying springtime?